Pro-anorexia culture 'explodes' on Instagram, says charity

A CRACKDOWN on pro-anorexia 'thinspiration' photos on Instagram has failed to clamp down on the disturbing practice.

Last year, Instagram announced new rules on photos glorifying anorexia, banning search terms like "thinspo", "probulimia" and "proanorexia".

But users have easily dodged the restrictions and today the app is saturated with easily accessible pro-ana photos.

There are more than 102,350 images on the service with the hashtag #thynspo, and tens of thousands more exist under different spellings.

Instagram 'selfie'-style pictures of young women who are all skin-and-bones are often accompanied with captions like:

"Hunger hurts… But starving works"

"I plan to sleep all day so I don't eat"

"I want to be skinny… I want a thigh gap"

"Because, when you are thin, you can do whatever you want and everyone will love you"

"I look at Thinspo like boys look at porn"

"We hate these websites," says Christine Morgan, the CEO of Australia's peak eating disorder charity, the Butterfly Foundation, which has witnessed a shift to the photo-sharing service from other social media websites like Tumblr and PInterest in the past year.

"The doors are being thrown wide open through accessibility to social media," she says.

Pro-anorexicSource:news.com.au

It's a tricky situation, though. There are concerns that if rules are made tighter it might end up encouraging the behaviour.

"As soon as you ban something, you obviously make it very attractive to some cohorts," Ms Morgan says. But open access means people have no safeguards at all.

The spread of "thynspo" on Instagram is particularly concerning given it's most popular with women under 29 – the group most vulnerable to eating disorders.

One of the biggest problems is that these websites encourage worse behaviour in people who are already suffering from anorexia, the Butterfly Foundation says.

More and more Australians are suffering from eating disorders, in both younger and older age groups.

The benefit of discussing the graphic websites is that many parents would be unaware of how young people are using the app, Ms Morgan said.

"I think it's a quite a hidden thing. Parents wouldn't be aware that this social media platform has exploded in use in this way."

In 2008, federal Labor MP turned Speaker Anna Burke called for the websites to banned. "It's something we really need to explore," she was quoted saying at the time.

Instagram lets people flag inappropriate content and also provides links to American eating disorder help websites on some search terms.

"(The website) has generally not given the impression that it is particularly heavy-handed in its approach to regulating content or behavior on the site," said Associate Professor Jean Burgess, a social media expert at the Queensland University of Technology.

Tumblr and PInterest have a policy of pulling down 'thinspo' content. News.com.au has contacted Instagram for comment.

Telephone counselling for eating disorders is available through the Butterfly Foundation on 1300 EDHOPE (1300334673). If you need help, Lifeline is available 24 hours a day on 13 11 14.